At Cisco we are believers in the Borderless Networks mantra of any device, anywhere. One of the ways we deliver on this vision is with AnyConnect, our secure mobility client that provides a secure, encrypted connection back to corporate, just the thing for road warriors who might have to use public wifi in coffee shops or airports.

I started to link to my fellow Cisco Bloggers for their posts on Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) but already there are too many for which to build the links. I’m a WAAS guy so I thought I would draw you attention to the other press release that mentions Cisco WAAS.

The next layer as we peel the old onion is that Cisco WAAS is now optimized for Citrix XenDesktop. More explicitly, the Cisco WAAS engineering team has been collaborating with engineers from Citrix so that Cisco WAAS can understand the Citrix HDX and ICA protocols well enough to be able to optimize the traffic without Citrix administrators having to change any compression or encryption settings. And because it’s a a collaboration born of the strategic agreement between Cisco and Citrix, it will be jointly validated, marked as Citrix Ready prior to general availability, and will be supported by both vendors, with clean hand off mechanisms defined between both companies’ support teams.

Today, there is lots of buzz around the big news from Cisco and our ecosystem partners with the launch of next generation VXI validated solutions. If you missed our launch event, you can still get all the details online via our community.

Pretty cool but, why is virtualization important for government agencies?

cost control, more than ever government agencies are focused on strategies to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs

flexibilty, allow government workers ability to work in different workplaces, from city hall to public works, with choices of different combinations of virtual desktops, voice, and video devices including latest smartphones, tablets, and Cisco Virtualization Experience Clients (VXC)

security, better security and control of information in the data center rather than distributed endpoints and with the “bring your own device” (BYOD) to work phenomenon, security is more critical than ever

Everyone looks forward to Friday: it’s the end of the workweek afterall! We get to enjoy dinners out with friends and family, head to the pub, go out dancing, or just have a quiet night at home with a bottle of wine and a movie.

While I definitely look forward to many of those things, too, another thing that caps off the week nicely is to catch up on all of the interesting technology news that took place. This week, Cisco had two networking announcements: one on the Cisco WAAS portfolio and the other regarding everyone’s favorite switch (Catalyst).

Like so many millions of people around the world this week, the passing of Steve Jobs and Apple’s call to “Think Different” has us doing exactly that. His ideas improved the world in innumerable ways, and the best way we can honor his brilliance is to build on it in ways that even Steve might not have imagined.

Each of us in the I.T. world has huge potential to improve the day-to-day existence of our co-workers, partners, and customers, if we just take a few minutes to think differently and approach our traditional challenges with a new mind set. Here are just a few ideas on we might invest in our future together. I’d love to hear yours.

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